Ask most professionals how they use AI today, and the answers will probably look familiar. They may draft an email, polish a paragraph, summarize a document, or ask a quick question instead of opening a browser. This usage can be a real productivity gain and one worth keeping. For most businesses, though, it is where AI use currently stops.
The next phase of AI adoption is agentic AI. This software can take action on your behalf and complete routine work without your team driving every step. While much of that activity from early adopters might still focus on familiar tasks like drafting and summarizing, the larger opportunity sits further down the line, where AI handles defined routine work and gives people time back for more valuable tasks.
Where Most AI Use Currently Sits
At this stage of adoption, AI is something you open when you need it. You decide a task is worth the tool, type a prompt, read what comes back, and decide what happens with the output. The technology is often faster than drafting from scratch or searching through a long document. That is why so many businesses have adopted AI use. What has not changed is that every interaction still starts with someone on your team pressing go.
McKinsey’s State of AI 2025 report found that 88% of survey respondents say their organizations use AI in at least one business function. The same report found that, in any single business function, no more than 10% of respondents say their organizations are scaling AI agents. Experimentation is widespread, but sustained autonomous use is still rare.
What Does Agentic AI Do?
Agentic AI describes software that can plan a multistep task, take action across business tools, and hand back a finished output for review. You set the goal and the rules. The agent handles the steps in between.
In practice, that means an agent can:
- Plan a sequence of steps to reach a defined outcome you have described.
- Pull data from multiple sources, such as your inbox, calendar, CRM, or a shared file, without you copying and pasting between them.
- Make routine decisions along the way using rules you have set and patterns it has seen before.
- Hand back a finished output for you to review, refine, or approve.
For many businesses, this capability can appear inside tools they already use. Microsoft 365 Copilot agents, Microsoft Power Automate workflows, and similar capabilities across major cloud platforms are making agentic AI more accessible. The infrastructure is largely in place. What most teams still need is a clear view of which tasks are worth automating and a structured way to build those workflows safely.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Three patterns show up consistently when growing businesses move from drafting assistance into real automation.
Monday morning briefings: An agent reviews unread emails, the meetings ahead, and open action items from the previous week. It then prepares a prioritized summary by 8 AM. You walk into the office already knowing where your attention is needed.
First-pass data work: A weekly report or sales export reaches the inbox. An agent cleans the formatting, runs the standard pivot, flags anything unusual, and returns a working draft. Your time goes into interpreting the numbers and deciding what to do next.
Recurring operational workflows: Weekly client status updates can be compiled and queued for review. New leads can be routed, tagged, and prequalified before anyone touches them. Invoice approvals can be chased automatically. Routine work moves forward in the background while the team focuses on the work that needs their judgment.
Across all three examples, the agent handles the routine work. The judgment calls stay with your team.
Time Back for the Work That Matters
For most leadership teams, this is the part that matters. Teams running on operating frameworks like EOS tend to feel this most acutely. There is rarely enough leadership capacity for strategic work.
Agentic AI gives experienced people time back for work AI cannot do well. That includes judgment calls, client relationships, strategic thinking, and creative problem-solving rooted in business context.
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index 2026 found that 66% of surveyed AI users say the technology has allowed them to spend more time on high-value work. The result is a practical shift in how the working day is spent: routine work is reduced, and experienced people can spend more hours where they are most valuable.
What It Takes to Get There
Useful agentic AI workflows require planning. Teams need to identify which tasks are worth automating, connect the right data sources without exposing sensitive information, set permissions sensibly, and define what agents are allowed to do.
Oversight Remains Essential
The first part of a task can often be handled in the background, but the review step is crucial. Someone in your business who is a subject matter expert should check the output, refine the prompts, and catch the occasional misstep before it reaches a client’s inbox.
This is where many teams get stuck. It is also where an experienced IT support partner can make a measurable difference. The right partner can help identify practical use cases, build workflows safely, and keep human oversight in the right places.
The Next Phase of AI Is Already Within Reach
The technology to move past drafting and into real automation is already inside many of the tools businesses use every day. The question is which workflows are worth automating first and how to place the right guardrails around them.
If your team is using AI to draft emails and summarize documents, there may be another meaningful step in productivity available. A conversation with Anderson Technologies can help clarify what agentic AI could realistically do in your business, which existing tools may support it, which tasks are best suited for automation, and what oversight belongs around them.
